Seven Swans a-Swimming
by Regency
Summary: AU. Each facing Christmas gatherings full of judgmental, meddling relatives and devoid of romance, Bernie and Serena hatch a daring plot: They'll pretend to be lovers till New Year's and then go their separate ways. A perfect plan were they not already deeply in love and both too afraid to say it. (For Day 7 of the 12 Days of Berena Ficfest.)
1. 20 December 2017

Author: Regency

Title: Seven Swans a-Swimming

Alt Title: as long as you love me so

Pairing: Serena Campbell/Bernie Wolfe

Summary: AU. Each facing Christmas gatherings full of judgmental, meddling relatives and devoid of romance, Bernie and Serena hatch a daring plot to appease their families and save themselves a couple of bent ears: They'll pretend to be lovers till New Year's and then go their separate ways. A perfect plan were they not already deeply in love and both too afraid to say it.

Prompt: Seven Swans a-Swimming for Day 7 of the 12 Days (of Berena) Ficfest on Tumblr and Ao3.

Author's Notes: Come flail with me about Berena on Tumblr, at sententiousandbellicose!

Disclaimer: I don't own any characters, settings, or stories recognizable as being from Holby City. They are the property of their actors, producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.

* * *

 **20 DECEMBER 2017**

Bernie turned her mobile over to give her full attention to Serena's report of her mother's latest efforts to chivvy her into love. Sadly, not a new topic for their after-hours foray into the depths of Albie's wine list. The holiday season didn't seem to be granting them any reprieves.

"Then, my mother asks me, 'Serena, when are you going to bring that charming Robbie around for Christmas dinner?' Charming, she says. She hated him! She thought he was a lout. I can't have imagined that from whole cloth." She was gesturing so expansively in disbelief she sloshed wine on the back of her hand. Bernie's fixated on the shape of her mouth as she sucked the spill off her thumb. Serena didn't notice.

"He could have been a very charming lout?" Bernie offered, not sounding altogether convinced. She hadn't been a fan of Robbie's in their brief acquaintance. She hadn't examined why.

Serena raised her chin, contempt molding her soft features into stone. "Not all that charming, talking to Jason the way he did."

In retrospect, Bernie remembered perfectly well why she hadn't taken to Robbie Medcalfe. Anybody who mistreated Jason got her back up. Anybody who mistreated Jason _and_ Serena when she defended Jason was unworthy of either Bernie's respect or her consideration. "You could trying telling her that."

Serena rolled her eyes over her glass of wine. Her third, possibly. Bernie wasn't keeping close count. They'd be sharing a taxi home, regardless. Neither were in any state to drive.

"And listen to her shout me down for baffling her? I'd rather have all four of my wisdom teeth removed again without anesthetic. Let her have her delusions about him, but I can't bring him. We're not speaking and certainly aren't an item. I'm not seeing anybody right now." She contemplated her wineglass as if considering the merit of a top-up to drown her sorrows.

Serena's habitual melancholy about her singleton status had grown more pronounced as the holiday season approached. As she'd confessed once, likewise schnockered at the time, she liked someone warm to snuggle up to when it was cold out. Bernie had been on her own in the winters too often to miss it, were she honest. She might have volunteered were the offer open, nonetheless.

"I suppose that presents an entirely new set of problems," Bernie said to keep the conversation moving. Serena needed to talk and Bernie was all too happy to listen.

Serena massaged the furrowed space between her eyebrows. "I'm fifty-three years old and somehow still scheming to avoid my mother's vocal disapproval. I thought I'd grown beyond this."

Bernie grimaced. Her mother was likewise imposing, her father the same though much more quietly. "You never outgrow wanting your parents to be proud of you. My brothers and I are all tiptoeing around the disaster areas of our private lives to avoid disappointing mum and vexing dad."

Serena's expression cleared, her own crisis forgotten. Bernie didn't talk about her family as a matter of practice. Serena had met Bernie's children once or twice in passing and was professionally acquainted with Marcus, but the other Wolfe relations were a mystery Bernie had left unresolved for reasons only she knew. "Are the Wolfes all very stoic?"

"Would you believe I'm the most animated of the bunch?" Bernie knew she could be difficult to read when she decided to be canny and Serena still hadn't entirely decoded her sense of humor, if the uncertainty flitting over her face was any indication.

Serena scanned her expression. "…Reluctantly."

Bernie cracked a smile and let her friend off the hook. "You're right to doubt it. My younger brother is the provocative one, my older brother is the leader, and I'm the reticent peacekeeper caught in the centre. It isn't any wonder I went to war; I knew what I was getting myself into." There were meant to be rules in war, at the very least; family was another matter.

"How have things been since the divorce? You don't talk about any of it much," said Serena, in her infinite wisdom choosing to tread lightly. She couldn't know Bernie was persona non grata in both her extended families. Her former in-laws had nothing to say to her that didn't involve a complete lack of surprise. They hadn't wanted Marcus to marry her in the first place, had said she was too driven by ambition and not enough in love twenty-five years ago.

Her father scarcely had two words for her. Not because her lover was a woman, not obviously, to his credit, rather because she hadn't kept her word, hadn't honored her vows of holy matrimony. She had dishonored her marriage and so dishonored herself and the name she bore; she had disappointed him. When she thought she had cried all the tears there were to cry, his censure had ensured there was a deluge on reserve.

Bernie drank deeply and considered switching from white wine to whiskey before giving her answer. "Things are improving." Her children were even speaking to her from time to time.

"Is that Bernie Wolfe for lousy, but you're going to repress your feelings on the matter till you burst?"

Bernie's fingers twitched along the stem of her glass while her opposite hand clenched on her thigh. What she wouldn't give for a smoke. "I'm not repressed."

"Sure, you aren't." From anybody else, Bernie might have taken the teasing to heart. Serena patted her arm, her expression gentle and fond, so she didn't.

"My parents were just very disappointed is all. They liked Marcus." Everyone had liked Marcus throughout their marriage. He was funny and unpretentious. He was the life of any party they attended while was Bernie cast as his quieter shadow. Hence his keeping all their friends and acquaintances as spoils in the divorce. Bernie had got away with her half and her shirt and not much else.

"I'm sure your parents like you more."

Bernie tipped her head noncommittally. "I wouldn't say that. What was it my mother said? 'Love the sinner, hate the sin.'" She pushed her wine to the side; it tasted of ash now anyhow. Her eyes were beginning to throb from the twinkling light strung about the pub.

"Ouch." Serena's expression tightened, wide eyes dark and sorrowful on her behalf.

Bernie shrugged; it was water off her back, down the drain, and under the bridge. For the most part. "It was confirmation of something I feared growing up." She cleared the rather emotive frog from her throat. "I'm fifty-three and wishing I'd held it together a few years longer, just so they wouldn't look at me like a stranger." Gentle though her ejection from the house had been, it had nonetheless been a request for her absence, and she had remained absent since.

"You aren't a stranger, you're their daughter."

"In that instant, that isn't how it felt." Marcus had told them everything ahead of her arrival. For some reason she hadn't thought he'd want their dirty laundry splashed around. She'd been mistaken.

"Bernie."

She smiled. It felt wrong, performative. Transparent. "It's all right, they've come around this year." She'd only had to wait nineteen months for them to have a kind word for her again, and it wasn't as though she'd been doing much reaching out herself. If she kept coming up with excuses, she wouldn't have to concern herself with how much their silence hurt. "My mother said they hope to meet my 'young woman' at the holidays. That's what she called Alex when they confronted me about what Marcus told them. My 'young woman'. My 'mistress' and wasn't that a novelty? Never once called her by her name." Bernie had become Berenice, an unruly, disobedient child who needed talking to and not listening to. She had departed feeling chastened, abandoned. A year and a half had worn none of the bitterness from those emotions.

 _Her name was Alex._ She didn't intend to harp on the matter, only her mind wouldn't let it alone. They had spoken of Alex as though she was the worst sort of deceiver, less than nothing and not someone Bernie had loved. She supposed her own silence was owed to that more than how they had treated her.

"Names make people real and it's easier to vilify someone who isn't real," Serena consoled her once she determined Bernie had sulked enough. "Alex was a woman you fell in love with; she must have been quite something if you loved her, but they weren't ready to see that. I don't doubt they meant well underneath the shock."

Bernie had no such faith in her parents. They were old school. Divorce was frowned upon. Partners who mated, mated for life. Anything else was unheard of.

"They wanted me to keep my family together the way they always have. Through war and peace, and affairs, and misery, they've kept it together." Bernie wondered for whose sake that had been. The Wolfe scion were no less catastrophic for being the product of a united home.

"For better or worse isn't the life for everyone." Not for either of them, anyway. Bernie wondered if she was alone in not regretting the loss.

"My father would say we don't know what love is anymore, because it's too easy to leave." He had said that in her vicinity. Not to her directly, but she'd gotten the message.

"What do you say?"

"I say sometimes love is leaving, when you know you aren't enough."

"That's where I disagree. I don't give a damn what they say, you're enough. You found out something about yourself that changed your life and you acted on it as countless people have throughout human history. You were unlucky enough to fall in star-crossed love. You can't be faulted for doing all you could to make it right."

"I'm not sure I made it right or just made it harder." Bernie cast her eyes toward the tinsel and garlands suspended from Albie's ceiling. All this Christmas spirit yet Bernie felt lonely, cast adrift despite all her bonds. "It was for nothing. I blew up my less than perfect family for what amounted to a fling. This is what that looks like. I was too cowardly to leave and then too cowardly to fight. I missed my window with her."

Serena tugged her pendant along its chain. "How do you know? I know she came to see you last year…"

"The entire hospital knows she came to see me. We weren't very discreet." One week with Alex and Bernie had lost her head, to her detriment.

"Bernie, what happened?" Of her civilian friends Serena and Dom stood the best chance of getting her to fess up to painful home truths. She hadn't been able to confide in either about this. Confessing made it real. Permanent.

"I went to her last year and told her I still loved her."

Serena leaned in, expectant. "And?"

"And she told me she still loved me."

"That's wonderful!" Only because she didn't know how it ended.

"We, um, we tried for a couple of months, being a couple, a real couple." It was a novelty, getting to hold Alex's hand in public. Some noticed, regarding them with instant kinship that Bernie could see now she knew to look for it and others observed with studied indifference that could only be disapproval. All in all, they mostly got on with being out together, undisturbed. There were dazzling moments—but then there were the rest.

"And?" prompted Serena when Bernie had once more sunk into a fretful mood.

"It was weird trying to build something after years of wanting the freedom to build it."

"Fantasy clashing with reality." She was beginning to get it.

"When you're dreaming up a life with someone, everything has its place. Me and her and my kids. The army. A dog. She wanted a dog."

"When would you have time for a dog?"

Bernie raised a hand in utter bewilderment. "I like dogs, but a dog needs more attention than we could possibly give with our work schedules. It wouldn't be fair." Bernie picked at a chipped nail. "That was our relationship. Chipping away at what we always wanted to what was really there." Bernie had been aware of Alex's feelings for her well before she knew them to be mutual. They'd had years to think about it.

"And what did you find?" Serena rubbed Bernie's wrist in solidarity, the weight of her hand grounding Bernie in the present.

"Not as much as we hoped. Relationships constructed on what might have been in another life aren't real. They're just dreams that can't hold their own weight." She crossed her arms, disengaging Serena's hand. "I couldn't see my way clear to a future with her that wasn't built on the rubble of my family. I couldn't envision discussing her with my kids or taking her to meet my parents. The thought made nauseous. It still makes me nauseous and they still want to meet her, give a look-over. I know what for: they want to judge for themselves if she was worth it." She scoffed at herself. Why did she care?

"Oh, Bernie. Don't do this to yourself."

"It's the first time they've reached out to me since the court case concluded. They're getting up there. It's not something I like to think about, but I want them to, to care about me again. I want to see my father again. I miss my mother. I have to go."

"Not if it's a misery. Don't go just to torture yourself."

"I'm not. I swear I'm not."

Serena's silence was as eloquently condemning as the eyebrow she raised.

"I'm not," Bernie reiterated, on the off-chance repetition moved the needle with Serena. It didn't.

"You make your own decisions. Don't go. Don't subject yourself to judgment from people who don't understand. Spend Christmas with Jason and me."

Bernie cupped her glass in both hands, fingertips pressed to the warm globe to give cause to the warmth suffusing her limbs. There was Serena again, opening her home to Bernie as she'd opened her ward, her family, her heart. Her heart.

"I doubt Ellie would like that." Elinor and Bernie had a distinctly chilly relationship, owing to Elinor perceiving Bernie as taking 'her' seat at the Campbell family dinner table.

"It's unlikely Ellie will make anything more substantial than a supply stop at mine on her way to the Seychelles with Edward and Liberty." Serena still spoke Edward's third wife's name as though it were an obscure food item she hadn't decided on yet. Did she hate it or tolerate it? Signs pointed to distant loathing. "Come over. There'll be too much food if you don't and you know I hate packing away leftovers."

"Not once the Fletchings get their helpings in."

"All the more reason for you to come over early and help me wrap up their last minute gifts. Evie is sure to go snooping."

"As tempting as that sounds, don't you have dinner with your mother to think about?"

Serena poured herself another generous glass of red, finishing off their second bottle with a glum grunt. Bernie waited for her to gulp down a fourth of it before putting her head in the lion's mouth.

"Seeking your own Dutch courage?"

"I've been trying not to think about it." She propped her chin on her hand, exuding a distinct air of disgruntlement Bernie had come to associate with Serena's terminally difficult mother. "I offered to let her host dinner at my house, but she insists that we eat at hers. I told her I had colleagues from the hospital relying on me to provide dinner and festivities and she informed me that I'd simply have to host the dinners back to back."

"Thus the date change."

"Thus the ruddy, bloody ridiculous, wholly inconvenient date change to an event that's been on the books for the better part of a year. My mother, I swear." Serena drank lest she say something unforgivable from one daughter to another. Bernie would forgive her for it.

"She's probably looking forward to being healthy enough to cook for the family. That wasn't assured a couple of years ago." Adrienne had come through her stroke frail and in need of much rehabilitation. This was the first year she'd been recuperated enough to live on her own, much less prepare a family meal for the holidays.

"It isn't that I don't understand her excitement. I'm overjoyed to have my mother, I'm not sure how I would have coped had I lost her to the stroke and subsequent complications. I only wish it would have made her easier to live with. She can be so…" Serena groped for a word to describe the tenacious, opinionated, deeply critical creature that was her mother.

"Overpowering?" suggested Bernie. Adrienne McKinnie was a live wire and perhaps one of the only living souls with a personality to outshine Serena's. Therein lay the problem.

"She's a Zamboni in human form and I'm the damned unsuspecting ice. I can't ever refuse her because she simply won't be refused! Every one of my objections falls on deaf ears." Serena sighed, the creases of wear deepening beside her eyes, her mouth. "Sometimes I think I'll never get to really be myself so long as she's hovering over me."

"What do you mean?"

Her fledgling smile faltered. "I wish I knew."

* * *

Bernie returned from the ladies room toward the end of the evening to find Serena agitated, phone clutched in hand, visibly fuming.

"What's happened? Is it Jason? Elinor?"

Serena looked up from her mobile to see Bernie hovering. "Oh no, much more tedious. My mother."

"Ah." Bernie dropped heavily into her chair, forcing her muscles to step down from their innate stress response group by group. That Serena's distress could trigger Bernie's fight, flight, or freeze instincts was a matter for another night and a cheaper brand of hooch. "What's she done?"

"She's been planning and she wants to know if Robbie has any allergies or food aversions. She wants him to feel welcome."

"She's really sold on Robbie." Bernie found it hard to believe anybody could have a strong opinion on the man other than 'put off.'

"I'm beginning to be curious about that myself. I may need to give him a call." Bernie's gut roiled. Some part of her worried that Robbie might show up any day to sweep Serena off her feet again. That Serena might be lonely enough to allow it despite her reservations.

"You think he's using Adrienne to get back in your good books?"

"I think I've been subject to sneakier ploys for romance, usually courtesy of my ex-husband." The one of Serena's suitors Bernie loathed above Robbie. She hadn't believed her opinion of a man could be lower till she met Edward Campbell.

"That's Robbie running 0-2."

"He's about to strike out."

Serena tried calling Robbie to no avail. Either he was avoiding her or he was busy. Serena tossed her mobile into her purse, disgusted. Bernie weighed the comfort of a third bottle against the hangover Serena would have to contend with during the Christmas party she was throwing at her house tomorrow night. Serena would be miserable and that much worse off.

"Am I making too much of this? It's just dinner, isn't it? What the worst that can happen?"

Bernie counted off worst case scenarios she had cooked up since this conversation started. "He'll think he's in with a chance. He'll follow you home. You'll sleep with him."

"Thank you for that sterling assessment of my judgment."

"That wasn't a criticism. I just think…maybe you aren't as opposed to another tumble with Robbie as you say you are."

"Bite your tongue."

"It's perfectly natural. You were lovers, he was apparently satisfactory in the sack; it makes sense you'd want him to, um, keep you warm. I've heard his quiff is more than adequate to the task."

"I regret ever saying that."

"Your romps were tickety-boo, if my sources are to be believed."

"Never again. I am never discussing my sex life in the workplace again."

"That knocks out most workplace conversation."

"Fair does." Serena swirled the dregs of her wine. "I just don't think it's him I want anymore. There was a time, obviously, I felt different, back when I thought he had the patience for Jason or the tolerance for me. I don't want to be alone, Bernie, and it's beginning to look like that's what my golden years have in store."

"Don't be ridiculous, you can still find someone."

"I could. I might. It shouldn't matter. It's not like I know what I'd like in a partner anymore. The old standbys don't seem to fit."

"No more Mr. Rugged Policeman?"

"Not as such."

"No more Charming Locum Anesthetist?"

"I could ask you the same thing. No more damsel registrars?"

Bernie squirmed at the allusion to Keeley on their ward. "That obvious?"

"I sensed some undercurrents."

Bernie squirmed all the more. "Nothing happened between us. We were friends, colleagues who happened to share a roof." With her husband and her two teenage children. An odd set-up in retrospect. "I might have become overinvested in her progress."

"It's all right to say you had feelings for her."

"I don't want you to think I go falling for every beautiful woman I work with."

"So long as you treated them well, I can think of worse penchants than having an eye for beauty."

"I don't want you to think-"

"Whatever it is, I can assure you I haven't thought it. I trust you. I hope the feeling's mutual."

Bernie searched her expression and found it genuine. She swallowed down a welling of gratitude or relief. She'd given up naming emotions. "It very much is."

"Good. Now let's speak no more about it."

"I'll drink to that."

They clinked glasses and sank into merry oblivion, the Christmas music piping through the speakers washing over them along with the murmur of their colleagues from the hospital. It wasn't a bad way to spend an evening, having only each other for company.

"You know, you could ring Edward and have him to solve your Adrienne problem."

"Ring his neck, I hope you mean."

"Having Edward and Liberty over for Christmas dinner would distract Adrienne."

"It would not distract her from cuffing me about the head for inviting him to darken her doorway once more. My ears are still burning from the tongue lashing I got last time he wormed his way into my bed. Away from me is where I like him. He and his youthful bride can trip the light fantastic to Mars for all I care. No, no, I'll just have to brave my mother's recommendations for improving my life without a partner, unless…"

Bernie's occipital tingled at the scheming light entering Serena's eyes. "Unless what?"

"Unless you agree to be my date."

"You've lost me." Bernie wished she didn't know what was going through Serena's mind, but after a year of friendship, she feared she knew very well.

Serena traced the rim of her wineglass. "I have an idea. We'll just be each other's dates. I'll be your new partner for your parents and you can distract my mother with your roguish military wit to keep her off the subject of Robbie and my dreadful taste in men."

"I don't know how my parents are going to take that, me moving on to something serious this quickly."

"It's been well over a year since the divorce; they have to assume you'd move on someday. Lesbians aren't eunuchs, nor should you have to eschew all companionship to win their approval." Serena's indignance on her behalf carried the duple weight of being affecting and ingratiating. Serena knew just how to sway Bernie to her way of thinking, she also had the damnable ability to startle Bernie with unsolicited gestures of affection. For all that the first was pure cunning charisma, the second was nothing less than sincere. Bernie found it difficult not to like a woman capable of both.

"My family has acquaintances all over. If you come along and someone mistakes you for my partner, it will make the rumor mill by Valentine's Day." By New Year's, realistically.

"The rumor mill already thinks I'm a power hungry, Machiavellian, social-climbing lesbian. At least this will be on-script."

"You've only dated men publically…"

Serena swept her rebuttal aside. "Don't ask for logic; that isn't what the rumor mill's about."

"I guess it isn't."

"You can say no."

"I should say no."

"You're hesitating because?"

"It's just my parents. My family. They aren't bigots, precisely. I'm not saying they are. They're…"

"Traditional?" Serena offered when Bernie failed to produce a fitting description. "Conservative?" She clicked her tongue. "Old-fashioned?"

"All tried and true euphemisms for them being enormous bigots, but I don't think so. That isn't to say my family doesn't have its fair share. The military vein runs deep in us; we're stoic and prone to secrecy and we can be unforgiving of those who aren't so secretive about themselves."

"'Why do they have to _flaunt it_ ' traditionalists?"

"Sometimes. The kids and grandkids are better. I have small grandnieces and they don't care at all who kisses who in their fairytale games. Princesses as knights and damsels both, princes be hanged. They have no idea that to some it still matters."

"It doesn't matter to you, does it?"

"I would be a hypocrite if it mattered to me. I quite like being a knight."

"That settles it. We'll go and give them something to look forward to. This way they'll see that the knight gets to kiss the princess, or the consultant, in real life and in fairytales."

"It's a nice idea." Tempting to Bernie for myriad reasons. The opportunity to kiss Serena alone might have had her leaping at such a chance in other circumstances, but she couldn't lead her friend into the lion's den without giving her fair warning. "I couldn't ask you to pretend, Serena. Being out isn't always easy."

"I know that." Serena reached out for Bernie, then seemed to think better of it. Bernie missed the aborted touch as though she'd felt it. "Is somebody in particular troubling you? If they're being inappropriate, we can take it to Hanssen. He won't tolerate that behavior. I won't tolerate that behavior." Holby City Hospital enforced a strict zero tolerance policy toward discrimination. If Bernie named names someone would be dismissed, end of. The military had been slower in catching up to the times that way, and instinctively it was the army's rules Bernie was compelled to follow.

"No one I can't handle on my own. I don't think you should have to deal with their bollocks, too." Bernie's patience for shit talk and name calling would vanish the instant Serena became its recipient.

"You're my friend, your bollocks is mine."

"It can be difficult."

"I've thought about that."

"Before or after the wine bender."

"Hush, you!"

Bernie wheezed at Serena's badly feigned outrage. She was the living embodiment of a wine mum. Serena could expect an extension of her Wine of the Month membership for Christmas for this very reason. Serena deserved her little indulgence, Bernie could give her that.

Bernie sobered, regarding Serena's pretty flush as some might any other beautiful sight. _And Serena can't know._ "I just don't want you pretending for my sake. It's a stupid family get-together; three days and then we won't see each other again for twelve months. I can handle it."

"I wouldn't need to pretend."

"Serena…"

Serena shot her a look of firm resolve. "I'll explain if you promise not to mock me."

Bernie looked at her meaningfully. "I wouldn't."

"You probably wouldn't. You're too _noble_." She rolled her eyes, but her hand found Bernie's over the table, regardless. Serena the tactile one, Serena who reached out to give reassurance sought it in return. Bernie held on and held her breath. "I've been interested in women before. I've had crushes or infatuations. I didn't really think anything of it because my relationships have all been with men. But…" Serena shifted. Their legs brushed. A charge passed between their fingers Bernie had taught herself to disregard. "I haven't only ever wanted men. There have also been women who fascinated me to the point of—I don't know. Like a craving you can't nail down." Serena nibbled on her thumbnail. "I foolishly assumed desire was part of the process of learning oneself. I didn't enquire further for years. The funniest part is I've had friends who are gay and friends who are lesbians, and until I met you, it never occurred to me that I could feel this way about women myself. The pieces never came together." Serena laughed at her own folly. Bernie found nothing about it laughable. "So when I say I don't have to pretend, I'm serious."

Serena's ballistic gaze finally landed on the table top, to the left of their joined hands. Bernie waited for her to look up. She didn't. Serena was waiting for the letdown.

"Congratulations on figuring yourself out."

"I wouldn't go _that_ far."

"I would. You get to celebrate this."

"I don't think my mother will agree, nor will Elinor. God, I don't dare think what the porters will say." Her hand flexed restlessly under Bernie's. If budget cuts drove Serena's blood pressure to record highs, gossip was death by a thousand papercuts. "The joke about me being a power hungry lesbian wasn't a joke. It was a rumor. I can't say…." She wet her lips. She still wouldn't look at Bernie while Bernie only had eyes for her. "I might have been more receptive to Edward because I had something to prove."

"I know I was more receptive to my ex-husband because I did." Bernie had allowed guilt to rule her when she agreed to resign her commission in favor of a life in Holby City. She had given up a thriving career in the dim hope of resuscitating a marriage she no longer wanted, out of some misplaced sense of responsibility for everyone else's happiness. "That's pressure for you. We revert to what we know just to keep going."

Serena raised her eyes. Her happy tipple had left her soft and blurry round the edges, glowing ruddy at the cheeks. Anxiety had stolen the light from her eyes. "So that's that."

"It is. Thank you for telling me."

"I've never told anyone."

"You can tell me anything. I mean that."

Serena shrugged a shoulder, growing sheepish under Bernie's intent stare. "It goes both ways."

"I never doubted that." Not for long. "Serena, this is so new. You know I can't ask you to out yourself for nothing."

Serena's anxiety was immediately supplanted by sheer nerve. "You aren't asking, I'm offering, and it wouldn't be for nothing, it would be for you. I can live with that." Bernie let herself yield to Serena's steadfastness. Serena clasped her hands around Bernie's, capturing it lest Bernie pull away.

"If you can, so can I. So about your mum, when's dinner?"

As easily as linking hands, they had a deal.


	2. 22 December 2017

**22 DECEMBER 2017**

It was five minutes past their scheduled meeting time, and Serena had resorted to pacing outside her front door. The walkway they'd shoveled in preparation for the party the night before was rapidly becoming lost in frost again, the path cut by Serena's anxious movements the only ground spared the winter inconvenience.

She paced to keep warm (her cheeks and nose would be ripe as cherry tomatoes at this rate). She paced to keep a level head. She paced to see whether Bernie's headlights were visible at the end of the street.

That they weren't didn't stop her from pacing. She took out her mobile to check for messages; yanked off her glove when the screen refused to respond to the tap of her fingers to try again. No messages.

Began to pace afresh. Ask herself whether despite all evidence to the contrary Bernie had forgotten the way.

Her house was dim relative to that of her neighbors who'd gone all out on the decorating. A blinking winter wonderland drew the eye several houses down while the house immediately to the right of hers was a veritable festival of fairy lights. Jason had preferred a more tasteful assortment of red and green fairy lights. They lined the drive and illuminated the windows and the doors. Jason had surprised her by insisting on wrapping the tree in their front garden in lights as well. Tasteful but understated. Any thought of going more extravagant had died when she saw his happiness at his decorating plan coming to fruition. Not everything had to be extravagant to be worthwhile, not even Christmas.

Serena was contemplating her home and Jason's tree when she registered the shutting of a car door and boots crunching over snow.

"I'm sorry I'm late."

Serena rounded on Bernie who stopped just clear of firing range, fifteen minutes after they'd agreed she should be here. It would be twenty minutes getting to her mother's. No less than five minutes finding someplace to park the car. Fashionably late ended thirty minutes before they could possibly arrive.

Bernie was compelled by her silence to explain: "There was three-car pile-up. I was in theater till forty-five minutes ago. I only had time for a quick shower." Her hair hung in limp waves around her face. Her collar was damp for all the dripping. She was shivering a little bit from the cold and, of all nights, she'd neglected to wear a scarf to protect her neck from the elements.

Serena's kneejerk irritation at Bernie's habitual tardiness fizzled in the face of her palpable remorse. For a woman who lived to a schedule from dawn till dusk for the better part of twenty years she was forever disregarding time tables in favor of whatever she deemed more important at a given moment. Serena had worried that she'd be the one getting disregarded this go round, but Bernie had followed through, as promised, if not when promised. Just as she had the previous night when she agreed to play co-hostess at Serena's Christmas dinner when Ric was unexpectedly called into surgery. She'd poured punch and sang carols to which she hadn't known the words in keys well beyond her range—and she'd done so with a smile. Despite an early shift, Bernie had stayed back to clean and clear away. At midnight, she'd bussed Serena's cheek under the mistletoe and refused her offer to stay the night. Patience, Serena vowed, was a virtue Bernie had earned.

Sighing in fond exasperation, she took off her scarf and looped it around Bernie's neck, tucking the ends under her coat lapels till she was snug as a bug in a rug. "It's fine. I'm just glad you agreed to come." Glad she'd shown up to have Serena's back yet again.

Bernie shrugged, wearing that bashful half smile of hers Serena couldn't seem to get enough of, the relieved one that followed a row narrowly avoided. "It's not a problem. I didn't ask before, did you want to take my car?"

Serena checked that she'd locked her front door again. Anger turned her memories into a muddle at the best of times and it only took one burglar to switch the dial on an otherwise merry holiday. "With your lead foot, I think not. My car will do."

Bernie grumbled, following in her wake like a truculent child, "It's miniscule."

Serena tutted back at her. "We weren't all blessed with coltish limbs, it suits my purposes just fine. This is where I've put the gifts—if you'd been on time, we could have put them in your car," she didn't hesitate to add purely to hear Bernie pipe up in her own defense. "You're welcome to adjust the seat as far back as you need to for comfort."

Bernie glanced at the house, the windows dark but for the porch light Serena had left burning. "Jason isn't joining us?"

"I dropped him over earlier in the day to help with the preparations. They like their time together."

"That's sweet."

"It is. My mother's good with him." For all that she often lacked patience with Serena, she found a wellspring for Jason. Serena didn't begrudge him.

They got underway as quickly as it was safe to take to the road. Snowfall had been light but consistent yesterday and tonight was no different.

"Jason's easy to love."

"That he is." Serena's hands tightened on the steering wheel and gear shift. "I think it must be like having a bit of my sister back. Jason certainly seems to enjoy the quality time." He all but gabbled her ear off the first day he spent with his grandmother on his own. Adrienne had acquired a devoted fan in her grandson with her stories and her biscuit recipes and her endless patience for watching documentaries about wars her own mother had told her about.

"How do you feel about that?"

Serena waited till they came to the next red light to respond. Bernie was watching her, hands angled in front of the heat. She'd forgotten her gloves as well. Bernie could think of seven separate methods for closing a perforated laceration on the fly without a moment to lose but might very well leave her head at home were it not firmly attached to her neck. "Are you really asking?"

"I'm really asking. I'm your, um, girlfriend till New Year's and I'm your friend the rest of the time. I want to know how you're feeling about all this."

"All right, you asked." Serena checked both ways for oncoming traffic and set off. "The more I see them together, the more I think my mother would have been happier with Marjorie and without me."

"No," Bernie cut through Serena's explanation soundly. "You're wrong."

"I'd like to agree with you."

"You should do that more often."

Serena glared at her when they came to a stop sign. Would have glared at her had she not caught Bernie discreetly sniffing her scarf, that same pleased smile from outside playing on her lips.

"Very droll," was what she settled on. Not terribly intimidating, granted, but Serena wasn't feeling all that gruff at present. The Bernie Wolfe Effect.

"Serena, your mother loves you and while I'm sure she'd trade almost anything to have both her children, I don't think she'd trade you for anything."

Were Serena much younger she might have grasped onto Bernie's well-meaning platitudes for dear life. But she had become a parent and been faced with the fact that despite one's good intentions, not every parent got the child they wished for. That didn't mean they loved their child any less, certainly not. But every now and then Adrienne's actions compelled Serena to question whether regret wasn't the root of all their conflict.

"For as long as I can remember she's always nitpicked at everything I do. The way I carry myself, the way I dress, my career decisions, my relationships. There's nothing about me that passes muster in her eyes, down to my choice in partner." She flicked a look toward Bernie to find herself the focus of Bernie's unblinking attention. Unnerving as ever, Bernie was. Serena adjusted her hat, returned her eyes to the road. "She's looking for a perfect daughter, only her idea of the perfect daughter is long dead." It felt cruel to think of Marjorie in those terms. She hadn't asked to be Serena's Ghost of Christmases past.

"Your mother's proud of you," Bernie insisted. "You said it yourself. She stitched every patch you earned. Devoted an entire wall to your awards and honors. Those are the acts of a proud mother. That's nothing less than you've done for Elinor, or I've done for either of my two, when they'd let me."

"You can be proud of someone and still find fault in them; in my mother's case, endlessly. It's nothing I haven't grown accustomed to, I'd have to over a lifetime, but it's tough to see it in action and know it isn't something to be overcome, only endured."

"I can't say I've been in your shoes, exactly, but I've been near it. My father was the younger brother of a boy who died young. He lived his entire life in his elder brother's shadow and my grandparents did little to show him the light."

"No talking about it?"

Bernie shook head, tucked her chin into the folds of her scarf until only her nose protruded. "No chance. Stiff upper lip from here to Kingdom Come. He's been that way all my life. I used to think his stoicism was an illustration of his strength."

"And now?"

"It's just a door he's hid behind so long he can no longer find the keys." They rode in silence for miles, slipping in and out of the easing traffic till they had reached her mother's side of town. "I think," Bernie said when she felt ready to begin again, "that she loves you with all her regret for Marjorie. Every milestone is lived twice. As it was for you and as it might have been for your sister. Her criticism isn't about any flaws in you but her own flaws magnified."

"Maybe. That doesn't stop blood welling up when the skin is pricked. I can't outstrip a saint and no matter who she was in life, in death that is what my sister became: the daughter my mother didn't know and the mother Jason lost, a hard act to follow."

"So don't. You have nothing to prove. Weren't you the one that told me I deserved better?" Serena's sheepish sidelong glance revealed Bernie raised eyebrows. "The same goes for you. You know you're remarkable, Serena. Big-hearted. Kind."

"I'm kind?" She liked that one. She hadn't been called kind in a few years and given Bernie's tendency toward understatement, she was inclined to take her word for it.

"You know you are."

"It feels like you're always having to boost my spirits." AAU and Jason and Arthur, now her mother and Marjorie; even Elinor, to a point. "What have I got to complain about? This is one night, I'll survive."

Bernie dropped a chilly hand atop her knee. " _We'll_ survive. Stick by me, I think you'll find I'm quite good at that." Serena interlocked their hands. Bernie wasn't the tactile type, she knew all these little overtures were for her benefit. Serena craved human contact and without missing a beat, Bernie had stepped in to fill that need. Thus it came as no surprise to Serena to find she had an especially soft spot for her co-lead. Bernie Wolfe wasn't the walking disaster she seemed to think.

She patted Bernie's hand and returned her own to the steering wheel. "All right, you lead and I'll follow."

"Can you say that into my phone? I want to make that my ringtone."

"Don't get smart or I'll turn this car straight around."

"Is straight really the direction you want to be going in?"

"Do you always have a gay joke on the tip of the tongue?"

Bernie rested her head back on the headrest and pursed her lips to suppress a smile. "Most of the time, but I've learned most people don't know what I'm talking about so I keep them to myself."

"Tip of the tongue?"

Even as Bernie carried on in silence her eyes danced behind her fringe.

Serena raised an accusing finger at her. "Don't."

Bernie lifted her hands in surrender and turned to watch the snow plowed to the sides of the roadways amass in unidentifiable drifts. She didn't have to say a word; Serena would be thinking it.

* * *

Bernie began to drum her fingers on the armrest as they drew nearer their destination. Not a fidgeter by nature, Bernie must have careened into the deep end of nervous to start showing it. She was the placid eye of any storm Serena was part of, the calm core in chaos, and tonight she was nervous.

"What are we telling your mother about us? We should have a cover story."

"I feel like a spy when you put it like that." That drew a shadow of a smile from her passenger.

"That'll get worse when my father gets hold of you. He'll have questions." _Questions,_ uttered in Bernie's dire intonation, gave Serena the impression she should read up on advanced interrogation techniques before their trip to the Wolfe ancestral pile. She wasn't eager to wake up tied to a hardback chair in a dank cellar in the countryside.

She shoved aside that worrying image. One crisis per evening. "My mother will have assumptions. You may not get a word in edgewise. Prepare yourself." She forced what she prayed was a comforting smile. Adrienne could be ruthless in her assumptions and those assumptions could be damning. She'd lost more than one beau as teenager to Adrienne's idea of idle small talk.

Bernie's rapping grew in intensity. Serena could sense the depth of her craving for a cigarette. Seven weeks without a smoke-barring a moment of weakness following a horrendous night shift a month back. Serena had smoked the cigarette and Bernie had breathed the smoke. Bernie had closed her eyes in ecstasy, head tipped back inhaling the heady scent of her favored vice; and, Serena had had her grand epiphany. She was attracted to women. She was attracted to Bernie. Here they were.

"So, about that cover story?"

Serena blinked back from the memory of Bernie's scent mingled with cigarette smoke. Her intent stare as Serena placed the cigarette between her lips, the flare of envy when it burned. How fascinating the lengths friends would go to keep each other sane.

"I think we should stick as close to the truth as possible. We met in the car park, made fast friends. There was a spark from our first handshake. You kissed me in theater after a procedure, several months on. I kissed you back."

Bernie's anxious rapping ceased. "We never kissed in theater."

There had been moments when Serena thought they might. Long days and longer surgeries. Overcome with exhaustion and running on fumes, Bernie the only person Serena trusted to understand, the unwavering faith in her eyes the sole dam separating Serena from her breaking point—during shifts such as those Serena thought about it. Wondered if Bernie ever thought about it, too.

"No, but wouldn't that be a funny place to fall in love?"

"It would be." Serena sensed she was being examined, but when she turned to check Bernie had already looked away.

She loosened her grip on the steering wheel when she started to lose feeling in her hands. This was going to be fine. She wasn't making an enormous mistake. It would all be over by New Year's. Only a few days more and everything could return to normal.

"You should decide what you'd like me to tell her about you. She'll ask about your marriage, your kids, your career. Whatever's off-limits, tell me and I'll come up with something."

Bernie followed the blur of opposing traffic with her eyes, hands loosely clasped in her lap. "My life's regrettably part of the public domain, you don't need to lie to protect me."

"A small lie when you're going to all this trouble for me is more than fine with me."

"Does she know about, erm, Alex?" The entire hospital knew about Bernie's affair with her former anesthetist. If Jason had thought to speak about it during his many afternoon visits to his grandmother's neither had mentioned it to Serena.

"She knows that we have divorce in common and that we're both consultants with grown children. I've never told her anything you weren't likely to mention on your own. I know you enjoy your privacy."

Bernie smiled at her. "Thanks."

The rest of the drive was quiet as two separate minds chewed over how to make the best of tonight.

* * *

No sooner had Serena given Bernie what she hoped was an encouraging smile than the door to her mother's quaint new home swung open.

Adrienne McKinnie lived. Two years after post-surgical complications led to a stroke that could surely have ended her life, Adrienne was well on the mend, of sound mind, and sharp tongue. Regardless of her doubts, Serena's heart leapt to see her mother hale and able to move about unassisted. It had required over a year of physical therapy for her mother to progress from wheelchair to walker to cane. When she stepped forward to embrace Serena, she walked with nary a shuffle in her gait, an almost complete recovery. Some would say miraculous. Serena might.

"Hello, Mum."

Her mother stepped back to give her a thorough onceover and usher her into the house. "My girl! We've been waiting for you. Why are you never on time?"

Serena whipped off her fur hat to neaten her hair before her mother could turn a critical eye toward how short she had cut it recently or the grey creeping in at her temples. Bernie had fingered the cropped ends when she was fresh from the salon and said she looked distinguished.

"I had to wait on my, erm, partner." Serena couldn't see herself as anybody's girlfriend at this point in her life, not even Bernie's. They'd compromised at _partner_ when _lover_ proved too intimate a sobriquet for either of their liking.

Adrienne fairly beamed. "Robbie, finally. Where is he?"

"Erm." Serena turned toward the open door outside which Bernie hovered like a pretty vacuum saleswoman on the front step. "Come in." Bernie shook off the smattering of snow that littered her shoulders and came inside. "Mum, this is Bernie. You remember Bernie."

Adrienne shifted seamlessly into her welcoming hostess persona. "Hello, Bernie. Welcome. Serena talks about you endlessly."

Serena's smile must have been a plastic monstrosity on her face for all the mortification swirling inside her. "We work together daily, Mother. It makes sense for me to talk about her."

Bernie smirked in a way that was all too knowing for Serena's good. So Bernie had been the catalyst for Serena realizing she wasn't entirely heterosexual. What woman could be with Bernie Wolfe in close proximity five days a week?

"She never talks about Robbie as much as she talks about you."

"There isn't as much to say about Robbie. He isn't that interesting."

"A dashing copper not interesting. You say the strangest things."

Serena shoved the bottles of brandy and wine she'd brought into her mother's arms, keen to get a move on to the dining room and away from this topic of conversation.

Dashing? The only dashing Robbie had done was dash away when he realized Serena had no intention of upending her career and her nephew to retire with him.

"Robbie is gone, Mum. We aren't together anymore. I'm with Bernie now."

"With her as in sharing a car with her?" Serena had thought she saw her mother at the window when they drove up. She ducked her head, pretending to spy a loose thread on her jumper.

"Yes, we came together. She's my plus one, it only made sense for me to drive."

"It really is pleasure to see you again, Mrs. McKinnie," Bernie interjected smoothly to ease the sudden chill in conversation.

Adrienne's tightlipped smile was quick and gone in a flash. "Charmed, I'm sure. Serena, make yourself useful and help the girl with her coat. She doesn't know where anything goes. I can't do it all."

Her piece spoken, Adrienne swanned off to see to the spread they could smell from the entryway. The house was just large enough for her mother and a couple of overnight guests to visit at once. It was bright and open, lived-in. Delicious scents permeated the air—roasting chestnuts and turkey gravy. Plum pudding. A Douglas fir decked with mathematical precision in phosphorescent lights cast a heavenly glow into the hall. Adrienne's home reminded Serena of being a girl; this was a place she wanted to belong.

She relieved Bernie of her coat and put it away in the coat closet alongside her hat and scarf. This was going to be one of _those_ nights. She just knew it.

"Not a bad start," Bernie said in an attempt to cheer her.

"Not bad, no." Not yet.

When a certain human tower of poor decision-making reared his head through the entry to her mother's living room, Serena knew she had spoken too soon.

"Welcome home, Serena."

Serena's eyebrow shot up. "Edward, you're here." Her mother _hated_ Edward.

"We're both here," announced his much younger wife Liberty, popping into the foyer to hang from Edward's arm like an irradiated limpet.

"We're all here," said Ellie, appearing from the guest bathroom, though her greeting was coated in a generous helping of sarcasm even Serena could appreciate.

"This is a surprise. I thought you three were spending Christmas off the coast of East Africa."

"Ellie wanted us together and you know I can't tell her no." Their daughter would be a different, possibly better, person had either of them excelled at it.

Serena kept well back of any potential conciliatory hugging on Edward's part. She was half-tempted to check his breath before she remembered he'd progressed to a colorless, odorless, virtually undetectable selection of spirits years ago.

"Even so, I'm sure my mother would have liked _some_ warning."

Adrienne ushered them into the dining room, heaving a world weary sigh that didn't strike Serena as entirely believable. "I knew she was up to something." As had Serena, and she didn't think Ellie was the only one. Distinguishing worthwhile caution from paranoia was becoming a going concern in her personal life. "Come along, you lot. Dinner is served."

Bernie hesitated to take the seat to Serena's left marked with a handwritten placement card for Robbie. Serena swiftly chucked it under her chair and gestured for Bernie to sit. Elinor had already taken the place to her right and she'd hate for Edward to get any ideas. Christmas had always made him excitable and as she knew from excruciating experience, matrimony was insufficient to deter to Edward's ravening libido.

Liberty, heaven help them, opened the floor to questions. "So, Rena." Serena transformed her grimace of distaste into an expressive blink. "What's this I hear about you and a dishy copper shacking up?"

Serena regretted once more her tendency to talk home at work where nobody kept their trap shut. Jason frowned.

Adrienne entered from the kitchen carrying the turkey and Edward and Bernie bounded up to relieve her of the burden. She delightedly passed up Edward's grasping hands to hand the main dish over to Bernie.

"How lovely! Bernie, was it?" She knew very well.

"Yes, Mrs. McKinnie." Polite. Winning. Gorgeous. Serena took in the sight of her easily hefting the beautifully cooked bird as though it weighed nothing with deep appreciation. For the next several days, she was allowed to ogle freely. Far be it for her to pass that up.

"Bernie, be a dear and take this to the table. Just put it anywhere. Edward, help me with the sides."

"Anything you need."

Adrienne pulled a disbelieving expression and disappeared with Edward into the kitchen. Her feelings on Edward evidently remained unchanged.

Bernie thus relieved of duty once the glistening turkey was in place, Serena was content to chew over the matter until she was summoned to the kitchen to pour the wine. Jason followed without being called and Elinor blithely ignored Liberty and Bernie's attempts at polite chitchat in favor of her phone.

"Jason, will you make sure the dessert is setting up properly. Watch your hands, the oven's very hot."

"Yes, Grandmother." Jason was immediately immersed in his task, cracking the oven door to reveal at least two baking trays working away. Plum pudding and milk tarts if her mother was reverting to family tradition.

Adrienne loaded Edward up with a serving dish of mashed potatoes in one arm, steamed vegetables in the other arm, and a delicate, overflowing gravy boat wobbling between his fingertips. "Edward, you've got your task. Move it along."

"Yes, Adrienne." He backed out of the kitchen through the swinging door, eyes rolling. No, no love lost there.

Serena sought out the wine fridge she'd splurged on for her mother's birthday last year to pick out the bottle she'd brought. "You wanted me to pour wine?"

Adrienne waited till Jason gave her the thumbs-up on his way back to the table to say anything. "I wanted you to bring Robbie."

Serena popped the cork on the Shiraz/Grenache and set it out of the way to breathe. "You hate Robbie."

"That's neither here nor there."

"I think it is. You hate him for the reason _I_ hate him." They were each keenly aware of Jason's presence just on the other side of the door. For all their differences, they were united in their protectiveness of him.

"I wanted Edward to know you'd moved on." There it was, the truth on display. This dinner had been a set-up and Robbie the lure.

"I have moved on. It's been _years_."

"He thinks you're pining."

Only the single worst mistake she'd made in the past five years would have the testicular fortitude to see Serena's renewed dedication to her career as _pining_. She was gagging for a drink.

"I didn't know the two of you were in the habit of discussing me."

"He talks to Elinor and Elinor talks to me."

"You're one-up on me since she doesn't answer my phone calls unless she needs money."

"Doesn't that sound familiar?"

"Not on my end."

"He needs to know you've moved on," her mother persisted, the previous subject dropped. Had Serena moved on any more thoroughly she'd no longer reside in the city—which was starting to sound like a terribly attractive proposition.

"He's about to. Now where are the bloody wineglasses so we can get on with it?"

* * *

Dinner conversation was slow moving once Elinor had exhausted subjects of her own interest to discuss. Jason, never entirely comfortable in mixed company, kept to his plate, only replying to his grandmother, aunt, and cousin when addressed. Neither Bernie nor Serena cared to talk shop tonight, which shockingly left them with little to say to anyone bar each other. Edward gloried in the void, the consummate never-ending storyteller. He filled any silence with his latest adventures in locum work. There were many. He was rolling stone and bard, excitable and exciting to anyone who hadn't had occasion to see through his showmanship. His stories had become a fraction as entertaining when Serena had begun investigating how much of any given tall tale was true. Without fail, always the worst parts.

Entertainment aside, dinner itself was nothing short of marvelous. Her mother had been an accomplished cook during Serena's childhood, for all that her work meant she travelled more than she kept home. Serena hadn't expected differently.

Liberty interrupted Serena's reminisces to continue her earlier line of questioning, with a new target in her sights. "Bernie, it's awfully sweet of you to keep Serena company at a family dinner, but don't you have someplace else to be for Christmas?"

Bernie reacted in stages. Her chewing slowed, she lowered her fork and wiped her mouth. Her eyes took on an overlarge, hunted appearance. Serena knew before she set her napkin on the table that she didn't have an answer. Cameron and Charlotte hadn't replied to her invitation. There was nothing more to say.

"Bernie's here with me because I asked her here. We'll be travelling to see her family tomorrow."

"But what will Robbie think?" Liberty cared bugger all about Robbie, she was relishing the chance to stick it to Serena in front of Edward. He brought out the worst in any woman who gave him the time of day.

"As I told my mother, Robbie isn't in the picture anymore. We tried not once, but _twice_ and found we simply had different dreams."

"Like freedom from privacy and unwanted guests?" Elinor's muttered remark pricked at Serena's nerves. Elinor had only crossed paths with Robbie because Elinor had shown up at the house unannounced during one of their overnight dates. If anybody should be put out about invasions of privacy perpetrated by unwanted guests, it wasn't Ellie.

"Like prioritizing family and cultivating a lasting career. Robbie's priorities were incompatible with mine. Bernie's aren't. That's why she's here instead of Robbie." Given the options tacitly on the table, choosing Bernie was the sane choice, and for Serena the easiest one.

Elinor turned up her nose at Serena's offhand admission. "Come off it, Mum. Like you'd ever go out with a girl."

Serena tossed her napkin on the table. "How would you know anything about my dating life? You don't ask." Elinor, in the way of most self-involved twentysomethings, had little more than the most passing of interests in her mother's love life. Even in circumstances where Serena might genuinely have been openly dating a woman, Elinor would of her own volition be among the last to find out. Happenstance and financial aid; their relationship in summary.

"I know because you're not like that."

"Sorry," Bernie piped up, taking exception to Ellie's tone. "Like what?"

Elinor waved a hand in front of her, aware she'd stepped in it and unwilling to apologize short of a royal decree. "Gay. Or queer or whatever. My mum's as straight as straight gets."

"I'm not 'as straight as straight gets.' As it turns out, I'm not straight at all."

Elinor stared at her. "Since when?"

"Since now."

"You're lying."

"I'm not."

Elinor's face reddened. "You are. This is just some weird midlife Sapphic whatever to stick it to Dad because he doesn't want you anymore. He got a younger wife, so you got a girlfriend to one-up him. That's pathetic, Mum." The comment stung more than Serena had any desire to admit. Pathetic, unwanted, undesirable; Edward had made her feel all those things and more on multiple occasions. However, tonight was not about how Edward made her feel.

"I don't know where anyone has got the idea that I give a damn about Edward anymore. I don't care about Edward." She shut him down before he could say his piece, "You burned your bridge with me when you all but let me hang on your drunken mistake in theater. You are the last person who should be speaking right now. Absolutely not." Bernie's hand on her arm halted her tirade. She hadn't noticed she'd stood till Bernie eased her back into her seat.

"I brought Bernie, _not_ Robbie, because I wanted Bernie here with me." That much was true. In a den of vipers, who best to have as support but a viper hunter? "Bernie and I are together, and I didn't want to hide it anymore."

Elinor snorted and drank her lemon water. "Yeah right, sure."

"Be serious, Serena." As though needlessly subjecting herself to potentially damning opinions of people she oftimes grudgingly cared for was a thing Serena got up to for fun on a Friday night.

"I don't recall asking for your opinion. You weren't supposed to be on the continent, much less at this dinner table tonight. Hold your tongue."

Adrienne laced her fingers together under her chin. "That's the second time you've said you're together now. What exactly do you mean by 'together'?"

Serena began the painstaking process of relaxing each muscle group in her body. She was so tense she'd lost the ability to lift her glass. The wine, delicious though it was—her mother had an exceptional palate—was tar on her tongue compared to the bitter tang of adrenalin rising in her throat. Her mother wasn't anything like intolerant, not the way most people meant when they used the word. Her mother was perfectly accepting of other people's peccadilloes; it was Serena's she found inherently flawed, hers she unfailingly nitpicked till Serena yielded, convinced deep down that she hadn't wanted what she yearned for anyway.

Bernie's hand appeared on Serena's knee, jarring her from the oubliette she'd tipped down inside her hollow head. She turned toward Bernie, trying to convey without words how scared she was. She'd been wrong, this was the most afraid she'd ever been. Losing her mother to death had been the most harrowing thing she'd survived, yet losing her mother to her mother's low opinion would be worse.

"Serena, answer me when I speak to you."

Bernie rubbed calming circles into her knee through her trousers, seeming to say it was fine, whatever Serena wanted was fine. Whatever Serena wanted was hardly ever fine. There lay the rub.

"Yes." Serena cleared her throat and reached down for Bernie's hand to set it on the table entwined with hers. "I'm with Bernie now."

"As in seeing her socially?" A pretty euphemism they could all hide behind to uphold the status quo. They would bicker and eat, and go on with their holidays apart. None of them would take her seriously, nor whatever it was between she and Bernie, nor any relationship Serena might have with a woman in the future. And there would be relationships. Serena wanted that. The more she was forced to face that desire, the more she wanted to claim it, immerse herself in it. Perhaps, if Bernie were willing…

"Yes, we're seeing each other socially and then some." She looked to Bernie for support and found Bernie had turned fully toward her. For once her expression was entirely transparent. _You can do this. We can do this._ They could do this.

"What else is there?" Her mother was being willfully obtuse. The twenty-first century hadn't invented homosexuality or bisexuality or any other variant of queerness that existed in the world. Her mother had dabbled as both translator and artist in France in her youth; on her, ignorance attained the level of parody.

Parody was the last thing on Serena's mind, as absurdly comedic as all this was. Serena swallowed back what all she'd eaten, her stomach too troubled to contain her portion of the feast. "There are plenty of ways for us to be together. Platonically. Socially. Romantically."

Liberty parroted her, tone and volume identical bar the tinge of incredulity: "Romantically?"

"Very romantically, when there's time."

Bernie's eyes creased in a teasing smile. Fletch had joked months ago that if Bernie put half the effort into finding a girlfriend that she put into treating Serena for her birthday, she'd be fighting women off with a stick. Bernie had clocked him in back of the head with a patient file.

"But why her? Serena, you're no lesbian. If it was companionship you wanted, what about that handsome Ric fellow?" Serena was surprised her mother recalled her days on AAU when it seemed she might take a turn for the worse. Adrienne had taken a shine to Ric and he to Adrienne. Serena suspected he only kept his distance out of friendship and professional loyalty to Serena.

"Ric's only a friend, Mum. And I didn't say I was a lesbian. The word is 'bisexual.' I am bisexual."

Adrienne barreled right along as if Serena hadn't spoken, "Or that delightful Mr. Self?"

"Not if he were the last man on Earth after an extinction-level event decimated the totality of his gender."

Bernie struggled to contain her signature goose laugh. _My life is better with you_ , Serena thought, her melancholy momentarily lifted.

"Sorry," said Bernie, wiping her eyes. "Private joke."

Bored, Elinor plucked a cherry tomato from the salad bowl into her mouth. "You've slept with some bums in your life, Mum, but this is a new low."

Serena had scarcely had a love life when Elinor was young and she'd been judicious in keeping her paramours far away from her daughter till she was sure the relationships would last. More and more, she thought the subjects of her daughter's bile were men Edward made up. Serena had worked too much for love and for motherhood. Both had suffered, and with them her reputation.

"Stop it, Ellie. You're put out because you didn't know, fine. Don't take that out on Bernie. There is _nothing_ wrong with Bernie." A great deal right with her, Serena was finding. Her valor wasn't merely reserved for battle fields and operating theaters, and environs comprised of both; that bulletproof skin of hers was good for other things.

"That remains to be seen," opined Adrienne between obscenely large gulps of wine. She'd taken to stroking her collarbone, an affected gesture mother and daughter had in common. _As though she's the one with anything to feel overwhelmed about!_

Edward had intrusive questions because this was going to continue to be that kind of evening. "Since when are you interested in women?"

Serena folded her napkin into a crane, as Jason had taught her during a transient obsession with origami. "Most of my life. I wasn't ready to acknowledge it at the time. I'm ready now."

"Don't you see there are men out there who would have you if you put in some effort, Rena." Serena silently counted back from ten. She had expected this response from her mother. Where before had her romantic seedlings borne such handsome fruit as Bernie Wolfe? Not since that footie player she gave half a thought to marrying in university.

"I have put in effort, Mother. Do you think this relationship happened overnight? It's work." That much was true. Co-existing and sharing authority on the same ward with another person required patience and compromise. The first was not a virtue in Serena's arsenal and the second she found particularly galling on a personal level. Bernie's velvet glove approach had slowly brought her around; their partnership was easier now.

"Where's the work in this? Where's the push and pull? Why choose the path of least resistance when there's a chance for more?"

Bernie cleared her throat, drawing all eyes back to her. "All due respect, Mrs. McKinnie, choosing to enter into a relationship with a woman in this climate is anything but the path of least resistance. It's unlearning the very questions you've asked and take for granted. It's conversations like this one, all the time, every holiday." Uncomfortable, plodding, prying conversations from otherwise intelligent people who ought to know better. Suddenly Bernie's perpetual datelessness was put in perspective. "This is supposed to be an early Christmas meal to toast your continuing good health; instead, it's become an inquisition into Serena's sexuality. Not very merry, is it?"

Jason carefully tapped is fork against the rim of his wineglass (containing the nonalcoholic cider of his choice). Adrienne and Serena winced. Those were the good wineglasses.

"I think we should leave them alone. Bernie makes Auntie Serena happy. Their temperaments are complementary. Bernie is quiet until she needs to speak and Auntie Serena is talkative until she needs to be quiet. I believe they make each other very happy. Do you make each other very happy?"

"Very happy, Jason," replied Bernie for them both. Serena gave Bernie's thumb a loving thump with her own. Bernie made her so happy, she hummed with it some days. It was a wonder Bernie couldn't hear the song.

"Then, we should let them be happy," her nephew concluded sagely.

"That's very kind of you, Jason. Thank you."

He nodded and tucked into his second helping of shepherd's pie. Regardless of the holiday, tonight was shepherd's pie night and he was content to have that for dinner over standard Christmas fare. None of the family could think of a compelling reason why he shouldn't have his druthers and left him to it.

Not telling Jason of their plan had been a risk. Thankfully his affection for both women superseded his agitation at being left out of pertinent news about the change in their relationship. Bernie was an integral part of his family with Serena to begin with, and now that role had a name.

"This is a lot of rigmarole over nothing," said Liberty in what might have passed for a conspiratorial whisper on stage at the Barbican. "You don't need to make something up to save face, Serena. You're among family."

Serena hissed across the table, "You are _not_ my family and I am not lying."

Bernie stuck an arm out in front of Serena to keep her from lashing out at the younger woman who riled her so effortlessly. "She isn't. We love each other. We thought you should know. The end." Bernie's declaration brooked no further argument. In a room full of perpetual debaters, a naïve hope.

"I just don't know about this," said her mother. She was going for the wine again, taking it from Elinor who had evidently decided that going teetotal for the holidays was out despite their multiple conversations about her drinking.

Serena was struck by a growing sense of futility. How could she convince people who would not be convinced? "Why is it so unbelievable to all of you that we would be together?"

"You don't seem like much of a couple is all," was Liberty's unhelpful contribution.

Jason swallowed a mouthful of potatoes. "They're quite a functional couple. Yesterday at brunch, they devised a chart to divide their chores for the holiday party. Auntie Serena made it and Bernie contributed a large portion to its functionality. I thought it was very well conceived." He had offered to color-code their duties on the basis of priority. Household triage, he'd titled it. It had been very helpful and he'd preened under their praise.

"Thank you, Jason."

"I'm sorry, I simply don't understand. You're–" Edward removed his glasses to grind his thumbs into his eyes. "Serena, she's…you know." Serena's teeth were on edge. She could fill in the blanks, she knew him. She wanted him to say what he knew he shouldn't.

"I don't. What is she?"

"She's not the kind of woman I saw you ending up with."

"You said yourself that the idea of me with a woman was beyond comprehension, but you must have given it some thought. Do you mean she isn't the kind of woman you day dreamed about me getting off with?"

"Serena," Adrienne cut in. "Enough of this. We don't need to discuss this now."

"No, I will not let him get away with imposing his ideas of sexuality on me and my partner without defending myself. Go on, Edward. Say what you mean."

The long-suffering sigh. The 'Serena is being hysterical' simper. And none of it she could call him on. "Forget it."

"I won't. You think she's too attractive for me."

"It's a matter of taste." In a practice old as their acquaintance, Edward would couch his undercutting asides as simple logic and Serena, in what passed for self-awareness in those days, would accept them. She had called him her counter-ego, the check to her surgeon's god complex. The truth was less idyllic—pride that was deeply bruised but not bleeding was too vain to leave and too sore to stay. Going would mean admitting he could have hurt her worse, staying would be waiting for it. She'd got it from both barrels.

"I was your taste three years ago. Funny how things change."

"If you can't have back the person you want, the next best thing is to make her miserable, eh, Edward?" Bernie squinted at Edward, inscrutable, arms crossed, posture casual. She was not a fan.

"Speaking from experience?"

"Notes from an acrimonious divorce. Maybe you should talk to someone about your unresolved feelings before they sink your third attempt at wedded bliss. Isn't the third time meant to be the charm?"

Edward glowered at Bernie. "Are you sure you want to throw your lot in with a philanderer, Serena? I remember that being a sticking point for you."

Bernie scoffed. "Don't tell me you've taken a shift or two at St. James. Are you a member of the Embittered Ex-Husband Support Circle there? Met my ex, by any chance?"

He mirrored her stance. "People talk."

"Some talk too much." This was Serena's first glimpse at how angry the end of her marriage had made Bernie. The guilt she would willingly shoulder; the ugliness, on the other hand, could have been avoided. Marcus had turned their dissolution into all-out war and here he was a year on, still launching volleys.

Serena tapped Bernie's forearm. They were done here.

"I think it's time we go. Bernie?"

Bernie checked to see if Serena was sure. Hardly. What Serena was, however, was deathly tired of fighting.

"I'll get our coats."

Serena pushed away her plate. "Thank you for having us for dinner." She let her eyes drift over Elinor who stabbed at her phone, angrier than anything that might hold her interest could warrant. She dared not give Edward a second look. "Enjoy your trip."

"Have a good night, Auntie Serena. Sleep well." Despite the tension at the table Jason had been content to keep out of it so long as there was no shouting.

"The same to you, Jason. I'll see you in a few days."

"You won't forget our Skype call on Monday, will you?" She'd call to see how he liked his gifts on Christmas afternoon and make sure all was well at Adrienne's. He was the only person besides Bernie she was looking forward to speaking to again.

"I won't."

He nodded, satisfied that all was as it should be.

The house was silent as a tomb as Serena retrieved her things from the hall closet. She'd only brought gifts for her mother and Jason, assuming Elinor would be by to pick up hers in the New Year. She left the gifts. Tied Bernie securely into her scarf when she tried to give it back.

She caught Bernie glaring at in Edward's direction as she helped her into her coat, the glint in her eye daring him to say something else she didn't like. Serena was burning in a flush and had been for so long she felt sure her face would never return to its natural color. Dejected. Bruised. Incensed. But surprised? That would require a shorter memory than Serena had.

Adrienne joined them at the door with a Tupperware container overflowing with leftovers Serena wouldn't be able to eat. _Something for the break room at work, then._ Bernie took it when Serena didn't reach for it and stepped outside to give mother and daughter a moment alone.

"It was one evening, Rena. Would it have killed you to keep quiet for one meal?"

Serena boggled. " _Yes_. I hate lying and I hate secrets and if there's anybody I should be able to tell I'm in love it should be my family."

Her mother folded her hands in front of her, prim in the face of Serena's messy humanity. "What is it you want me to say?"

"That you're happy for me. That you love me." That of all the so-called shortcomings Adrienne would overlook, they hadn't found their impasse.

"You know I do. But this? My girl, this isn't you." This wasn't the version of Serena Adrienne had boasted about. Not the daughter Adrienne had painstakingly planned for, as if she were a paper doll and her life a checklist written in the margins of Marjorie's baby book. Serena was becoming what Adrienne hadn't predicted—her own woman.

"It _is_ me, Mum. That's what I've been trying to tell you."

"Is it something I did?"

Every cell in Serena's body rebelled that this moment should be about her mother. Her every triumph had already been in some way a reflection of Adrienne's influence, every boast of Serena's accomplishments an indirect endorsement of Adrienne's parenting, and every degradation a condemnation of Serena's failure to keep to the path her mother had set forth. Serena could scream the house down at the unfairness of it. Or she could go home and drink and get on with it, refuse to give her mother the satisfaction. She elected for the latter.

"There's nothing anyone did. It's just the way I am. Good night, Mother. Make sure Jason takes his medication on time."

Elinor didn't come out to say goodbye. Also not a surprise.

Serena paused on the front steps to catch her breath before braving the snow flurries and the roving band of carolers assailing unsuspecting pedestrians this side of the street. Hark the Herald Angels Sing was going to haunt her sleep.

Bernie hesitantly pulled her into a sidelong hug. Were it not for the blustery winds moisture might have gathered in her eyes at the gesture. Surrounded by people every day and yet still no one to touch. No one else, anyway.

"All right?"

She canted her head in lieu of a verbal reply. She was a world away from all right.

"Talk to me."

"I can't believe I let them get to me. I swore I wouldn't let them get under my skin. I knew this would happen." She had predicted, down to the scoffing, that her mother would read Serena's bisexuality as an attack on her parenting rather than a fact of Serena's life. "My mother, the complete hypocrite. The artists she knew could fill galleries of LGBT+ museums. She used to translate poetry for them. She wrote speeches for them. She wrote obituaries for them. Why is it unacceptable when it's me?"

"There's nothing unacceptable about you. They were just surprised. You've never brought a woman home and here I am, scruffy army medic with a checkered past."

"You cheated, you didn't steal the Crown Jewels."

Bernie puffed up her chest like the most ridiculous of the pigeons that frequented their rooftop refuge at the hospital. "I could have."

"You performed the 35th successful atriocaval shunt in history with no advance notice and Jac Naylor breathing fire down your neck; damn right I think you could have. It's a good thing you didn't, though. I'm not sure how I'd have met you in prison." She had an inkling murdering her lowlife ex-husband might have been involved.

Bernie leaned close enough to whisper in her ear. "They're watching."

The picture window beside the steps emitted sparkling light from the front room, projecting it onto the snow-capped vehicles on the street. Serena didn't bother counting the shadows moving behind the Venetian blinds.

She looked up at Bernie, curious to see what she would do.

Bernie's lips met hers and for a single, solitary moment Serena forgot the simmering anger that could transition into heartbreak any minute now. This was how she would remember this dinner henceforth. Not as mince pies and turkey gravy and regret, but the sensation of Bernie's lips against her own for the first time. Her hand on Serena's arm, the other stealing under her hat into her hair. Her tongue in her mouth. Lips warm, a tad sticky from chapstick like Bernie had planned this.

Bernie retreated, looked between her eyes to see how she'd react. Serena blinked. Her previously numb lips stung, tingled. She was flushed for better reasons now.

"Why," she mouthed, cognizant that they had an audience.

Bernie kissed her again, an innocent peck as quickly ended as it began. "Because you're in my league and he knows it."

Serena had been prepared to put on a show to convince her family she and Bernie were the genuine article. Handholding, judicious use of cow eyes, halving their already limited concept of personal space to nil. She hadn't explicitly suggested kissing. She was grateful she hadn't ruled it out.

"Let's go home." Bernie guided her to the car, a hand on her back.

The Christmas decorations put up along the street seemed brighter, the carolers almost on-key. A not unhappy moment in an otherwise miserable night.

Bernie drove them back to Serena's, citing the amount of wine Serena had necked prior to an argument breaking out. She parked Serena's car at the end of the drive and accompanied her to the door.

"I'm sorry tonight didn't turn out the way you hoped." Bernie had instigated meaningless on the drive home to keep Serena from dwelling; this was what came when all distractions had been exhausted.

The vastness of the utter disaster tonight was swept over Serena. Bad enough that her mother had disbelieved her on general principle, but to have Edward and Liberty and her daughter as a jeering audience. That was more than she dared to linger over. Whether the incipient shame or indignation held greater sway was beyond her to decide. Tears sprung, unbidden, to her eyes.

"It doesn't matter. It's over. It's all over." Serena rifled around in her purse for keys. Hell, she couldn't recall if she'd properly locked the front door in the first place. _Had_ she brought her keys? A jiggle of the knob found the door snug shut so it was possible. "Forget it, it's all over."

Her face crumpled because it was all over, it had happened. Bernie folded Serena into her arms, pointy elbows digging into Serena's shoulders the tighter she held her. "Nothing's over. Everything will be all right."

"If they don't believe my best friend would have me, they won't believe anyone else." That was the crux of it. Bad enough that they should consider her ridiculous, this had become one more aspect of her to be considered unworthy, and they had all agreed. Except wonderful Jason. _And Bernie_. She couldn't overlook Bernie's defense of her. Well above the call of duty.

"Let them believe whatever version of the truth they want. I know better. You're brave. Kind. Strong. An excellent surgeon. An unequalled administrator. A beautiful woman. Any person, woman or otherwise, would be privileged to have you for a partner." Serena hid her face in the hollow of Bernie's neck for as long as she could. For being elbows and knees, she was a soft, safe place to land, yet still not somewhere Serena could hide forever.

She sniffed and turned to unlock the front door, sure her face was a mess of smudged makeup, her eyes puffy. Lips chewed raw. "You're not so bad yourself, for a scruffy so and so." She looked sidewise at her so she'd know she was kidding. Bernie had never been anything but striking in Serena's eyes in all their acquaintance.

"Everyone's a critic, but I don't see you producing an emergency hairbrush."

"I never will." Bernie's slapdash way with fashion only accentuated her appeal. Anyone too preoccupied of her vanity to bask in her brilliance merited the privilege of neither. Serena pressed a kiss on the apple of Bernie's cheek. Her skin was still cool from the wind, her own lips still warm from the fight. "Thank you for coming."

Bernie let her fingers rest where Serena's lips had been a second. Her turn to blush cupid red, unable to blame the cold. "Thanks for having me. Try to get some sleep?"

Serena promised to try in spite of the lack of success on the agenda

"Bernie?"

Bernie paused halfway to her car at the kerb. "Forget something?"

"I was wondering what I should wear tomorrow. Formal, casual. I want to look my best for your parents."

Bernie gave her a thorough up and down look. Serena's heart throbbed improbably at the appreciation she found in her gaze. "Anything. You're always camera-ready."

She held on to the door frame, called it a long day and not a girlish swoon. "You're supposed to say that."

"As your partner, I am, but as your friend, it's still true."

Serena worried her lip. Chose to believe her. She nodded. "Good night, Bernie."

"Good night."

Serena stayed up far too late packing and slept surprisingly well. The Bernie Wolfe Effect.


End file.
